News of the Western Belize Recreational Area, about 500 square miles of waterfalls, caves, Mayan ruins and pyramids, Belize Alps, foothills, ranches and farms, tourist accomodations of all types and description, tours and expeditions for vacationers and visitors. Even a small growing expatriate retirement group of people from different countries. In Belize, this is where it is happening, all the things that are fun and even serious, with a climate of ETERNAL SPRING.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

GUATEMALAN CLAIM to Belize update

THE DEBATE ON THE BRAND NEW GUATEMALAN CLAIM

The secrecy over a BRAND NEW Guatemalan claim and the actions of our Prime Minister and the Attorney General, both UDP party member lawyers, took the nation by surprise. The Guatemalan Claim was resolved in 1981, when Belize went independent of Great Britain under the guarantees of the UNITED NATIONS for SELF DETERMINATION. Not only the world nations through the United Nations guaranteed our sovereignty and territorial integrity at that time, but also our large English Speaking Commonwealth of nations with common military ties and legal and educational methods. We have a wide array of countries and military might to call upon, if needed.

Where did this NEW claim come from? According to our Prime Minister and Attorney General, these two just signed without approval of the public on our behalf, an AGREEMENT to discuss and put to a referendum a BRAND NEW Guatemalan claim. In that claim there is now talk of COMPENSATING GUATEMALA for some old slight in ancient treaties of the major European powers. From what I understand of the historical review, BEFORE our Idependence, this was to do with Great Britain and Guatemala ? Why our CABINET didn’t send these new overtures from Guatemala packing and sluff them off, like any con man grafter you meet on the Swing Bridge in Belize City , I will never know. Obviously the new attempt to claim was half hearted and not serious. Even the Guatemalans say so! What amazes me, is that these two lawyers claim CABINET and UDP party approval. I simply cannot believe people like Elvin Penner and Rene Montero would have given credence to this nonsense. The lawyers must have really panicked the CABINET with their gobblygook and legal minutia definitions.

Where did this claim come from? This claim is a repeating cycle, because GUATEMALA has it in their CONSTITUTION that a claim to repossess Belize must be put forward by any NEW GOVERNMENT in Guatemala . Guatemala in the last two decades and a half, and at least two peaceful changes of democratic government did not apparently believe in this claim at high political levels. They are just going through the legal motions required of them by their CONSTITUTION. The old generals have been dismissed, the ARMY downsized, Guatemala is annually building a new society which includes their indigenous Indians and is now ruled by CIVILIANS. Their last two Presidents have been pretty good. The school books and maps have been changed. Citizens over there are no longer taught that Britain stole British Honduras from them. We have trade and cooperation at the border. We are nowadays good neighbors.

How then could our own government led by two gullible naïve lawyers be so led astray? I suppose our more simple country elected representatives must have been swayed by the legal expertise gobblygook of our two townie fast talking UDP party lawyers. It is after all a new generation in government. In the world of business and military force, lawyers are noted as being naïve and gullible for the most part. In Canada and the USA , the first sucker mailing list target for any PENNY MINE stock scam are DOCTORS AND LAWYERS. Nobody is not going to say they are not intelligent, it is just that they are not street smart. I’m a marine architect and shipwright. That makes me in my own specialized field as smart as any doctor or lawyer, or even smarter if I stick to my specialty. SUCKER LISTS in North America are always aimed at Doctors and Lawyers, because outside of their specialized field they are stupid and have extra cash they do not know what to do with. Plus they have the GOD COMPLEX, a sort of swollen EGO that tells them they know ALL THINGS and they get suckered by con men into schemes outside their area of expertise.

That said; the BRAND NEW Guatemalan claim was expected by some of us lay public and we have been warning for decades, that until Guatemala amends that paragraph in their Constitution, new legislators over there MUST make a new claim periodically against Belize; which we with our advance knowledge of such a thing happening in Belize, should have a program policy to deal with it. This is the first case since the GUATEMALAN CLAIM was settled once and for all as far as we Belizeans are concerned, in 1981 at the time of INDEPENDENCE through the United Nations term for SELF DETERMINATION. All claims and quarrels by foreign parties were nullified at that time, as far as our new country is concerned.

Our government should have sluffed the COMPENSATION claim off and referred the Guatemala opening gambit in this game of high stakes chess to GREAT BRITAIN. We do not as an independent nation recognize any spurious claims between old parties of Europe and Guatemala , or the so-called historical reasons involved. In this type of game, the WAR is over TACTICS and STRATEGY. We are INDEPENDENT and legally so, with our sovereignty and territorial integrity intact. This is GUARANTEED by the UNITED NATIONS and our fellow member English speaking nations of the COMMONWEALTH in 1981. This is the end of the story as far as diplomatic moves are concerned in Belize . Send Guatemala to Great Britain to seek compensation on historical arguments. It has nothing to do with the NEW nation of BELIZE .

Our two UDP lawyers by stampeding our more uneducated elected representatives with legal mish mash in the CABINET are up to no good. Probably the cynic in me expects their law firms to make buckoos of money off any legal entanglements they get us into. The danger is; if we as a nation recognize a BRAND NEW claim as an Independent nation, you set a PRECEDENT and in the future this is bad for us. Tactically our game is to refer them to Britain , and ignore the cyclical procedure of claiming Belize , even the Guatemalans of today do not believe in. I was totally surprised that Barrow our Prime Minister I saw on television saying he would VOTE YES for the ICJ court. I could not believe my ears! It is even worse when ELRINGTON our attorney general starts intimidating citizens of Belize with threats of WAR. Nothing could be further from the truth. The relationship with Guatemala today is not that of the 1960’s and 1970’s when mafia Generals and the army ran that country using the CONQUISTADOR methodology of ARMY and CATHOLIC CHURCH to oppress the population of Guatemala . Guatemala today is a modern country and democracy and improving every year. Any tactic we take, should be the form of paid media articles in Guatemala showing them they need to take out that offending paragraph in the Constitution. This is what is causing trouble in our relationships as friends and neighbors.

Our two UDP lawyers in government are severely out of touch with reality, or as the cynics claim, manipulating our foreign policy to make money for their law firms. What they can do, is insert an amendment into OUR CONSTITUTION making it illegal and treasonous for any government official to recognize any claim to the Territorial Integrety and sovereign independence of Belize as a nation.